Late Night Samgyeopsal and Soju – FAPFAP!

Let us just say, this day was one of the most frustrating taping days of our lives! Really quickly, so this doesn’t seem like a complaint fest: we were supposed to go WANKing. We brought all of our camera and audio gear, took a taxi into Hongdae, and started filming. Boom! It was great. Then, all of a sudden, all of our batteries died. Just…poof! The weird thing about it: we charged them overnight. HOW COULD THEY HAVE DIED? To try to save the day, I (Simon here) took a taxi to the Canon shop to try to buy some extra batteries for the camera. Well, whaddayaknow: the shop shut down. ARRGGHH!

So, we went home with our tails tucked between our legs, and thought that the universe was giving us a sign to not film that WANK. We were so grumpy! What were we going to do? Well, we did one of our favourite things to do to make us feel better at the end of a night: go out for Samgyeopsal and Soju! And so, we figured, why not show you what our favourite Samgyeopsal place is like? Two birds with one stone! Yes, it’s not a WANK, but it’s a FAPFAP, and we kinda sorta did a WANK last week. So this fits!

Now, for those of you who have never seen Korean barbecue before, I’m worried that this video isn’t really the BEST representation of what the experience is like. See, we go to this place often. Like, all the time, because it’s open until 4am, so no matter when we’re hungry or up late editing, we go here. So the staff knows us very well. They know what we usually order, they know what we like, they even remembered not to bring us any rice because we don’t eat rice anymore, even though we were in Canada for a month. YES I KNOW IT’S WEIRD NOT TO EAT RICE IN KOREA! We went to the wrong continent for us NOT to eat rice. But it’s part of our diet right now. Nothing white, essentially, apart from cauliflower…and heavy cream…and marshmallows…wait, that last one wasn’t right.

Anyhow, our diet isn’t the point: the point is, since the staff here knows us so well, we didn’t really get a chance to set up our cameras and to order properly on camera. I’m sure they were really confused when they saw us come in with our camera gear, but that didn’t stop them much from walking right up while we were in the middle of setting up and taking our orders. Ha! You know, I don’t even think they know what it is our jobs actually are. They asked us if we were teachers before, to which we said no, and tried to explain that we’re bloggers, but PFFFF that didn’t work. We can barely explain what we do to people in ENGLISH: we’ve got no chance of explaining it in Korean.

Long story short: we were rushed, and if you order food it’s probably going to take a bit more effort than what we just showed you. We’ve got the menu memorized, while you might hmmm and hmmmhaahhhmmm for a while, but really, Korean waitress and waiters don’t really expect you to hrrrrm and humm, most shops will either bring you ONE single menu (no matter how many people are at the table) or no menu at all (since it’s on the wall) and right away be like, “what would you like” even if you JUST sat down. It’s a “quick quick” culture! But we don’t mess around when it comes to ordering meat. MEAT! Oh: in the middle of filming this as well we realized that we were supposed to do a vegetarian FAPFAP, but totally forgot about it. Sorry to you vegetarians! We will do Korean Vegetarian food one of these days! I SWEAR!

If you haven’t had Samgyeopsal before, the best way to describe it is MEGA BACON that hasn’t been smoked. Think of it this way: Bacon is to Samgyeopsal the way Bruce Banner is to the Hulk. The former is scraggly, weak, insipid; the latter, MEGA HUGE MANLY OVERWHELMINGNESS. Yeah. That’s a fair analogy. I’ve never seen Samgyeopsal prepared the same way bacon is prepared, as I’ve only seen Samgyeopsal prepared over a grill and a live fire in Korean restaurants. I can’t imagine what the equivalent of Bacon and Eggs would be. Maybe Samgyeopsal and Ostrich eggs? Do people eat Ostrich eggs? I don’t want to Google that…

Soju, on the other hand, is not nearly as enjoyable as Samgyeopsal is, though it seems kind of tradition to pair the two, like…like what? Is there any food that you have to pair with an alcoholic drink? Chicken and beer? I’m sure there’s an equivalent out there. Help me out, readers! Problem is, Soju doesn’t really taste good. It’s super effective, in that it has a high alcohol percentage, but I haven’t met a single human on this earth who drinks Soju because they fancy the taste. I’d imagine it’s what cleaning chemicals taste like, if you were to distil them. Windex, probably. Or nail polish remover. But Martina has learned to make a pretty awesome Strawberry soju…this must wait until another video. Oh and BTW, we didn’t actually end up drinking that soju (due to tiredness) or the cola (because of our diet) but doesn’t it seem like Simon is really really drunk in this video? I (Martina) edited the video and as I watched Simon talk to camera I was like, “Geeeezzzz Simon looks really drunk…but we didn’t drink anything before the video! Hahahaha!” I chalk it up to jet lag. It takes a day for every hour of time difference to recover, so we’re looking at 14 hours = 2 weeks. We are on day 10 or so. *falls asleep abruptly* HUUZAHH! *wakes up abruptly* I’m hungry….

Ah! That’s enough rambling for now. Hope you liked our video, and hopefully when you come to Korea you can enjoy the awesomeness of Samgyeopsal and Soju together, outside on the patio of a restaurant, on a warm summer’s night…

…though, seriously: WTF was everyone doing up on a Wednesday night at 1:30 AM?!?! Don’t they have to work the next day?!?!

Lastly, we’ve got some bloopers, and we were supposed to include some of the extra tips we recorded in those bloopers, like different games to play with Soju, but something went off with the mics, and we sounded like robots. You can notice it starting during Simon’s cola + soju tutorial. WAIT! MAYBE IT’S THE SAME THING THAT KILLED OUR BATTERIES IN HONGDAE!!! Are we being haunted?!! DA DA DAAAA!!!!!

Late Night Samgyeopsal and Soju – FAPFAP!

31 COMMENTS

OMG! This place was AWESOME!!! Thanks Simon and Martina! It was worth the venture out there from where we are staying (Gangnam). We have been eating at several different Samgyeopsal places, and this one by far had the thickest slices, and easily melted in your mouth! For those visiting Seoul, Google Maps hasn’t updated Line 7, and I was having the hardest time trying to find how to get to that part of Bucheon. Line 7 now goes through Bucheon. Take Line 7 to the Sinjung-dong exit. I didn’t catch which exit # it was, because I overshot and went to the City Hall exit, and had some walking to do. When you exit the train, you should see signs for the Lotte Department Store. Follow them, and it will dump you into the Food Court of Lotte. Walk through the Food Court (follow the signs for the “Way Out” from the subway). Eventually, you’ll get to escalators that will take you to the street level. When you walk out those doors, you will be facing the “street” you need to walk down, passing the McDonalds on the right (the one Simon/Martina mentioned above). Keep walking about halfway of this block, and on your right, you will notice the place because it’s 2 to 3 times wider than most the other places… has large windows, and if you look inside to the back, it has a patio. The tables (as shown in the video) have the rectangular openings for the grill, as opposed to the round ones everyone else has. These rectangular ones grill Samgyeopsal much better, because they fit! Happy hunting!!

I just went there today.. Line 7 extends into Bucheon now (Google Maps doesn’t show it.. it says Line 7 ends at Onsu).. take the Sinjung-dong exit, then go the direction of Lotte Department Store, then go through the Food Court, following the Way Out signs, then take the escalators up to the street level, walk past the McDonalds to about half-way up the block, it will be on the right.. see my “long” post I just posted..

Wow, that looks so good. I will definitely try that when I go to Korea. Though I have one ginormous problem: I can’t eat pork. So do they ever serve that in a different type of meat? Or is it really pork all the way? :(

OMG how come you guise so cute like that lol you know how to eat those garlics and kimchi! so surprising! You even know that game, hit the number?! cause you were with students? but it’s kinda college level game, which is popular during OT or other events, etc… so impressive you two enjoy that cuisine! makes me hungry so bad! cause I skipped my dinner :p